Kingspan

Client Profile

Kingspan Environmental & Renewables Ltd is a leading manufacturer of products for the construction, domestic and commercial markets.

A division of Kingspan Group Plc, Kingspan Environmental & Renewables operates from around forty locations. These are mainly in the UK and Ireland, but it has a sales presence and two manufacturing plants in Europe. The divisional head office is based in Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland. Over the years, the business has grown organically and through acquisitions, effectively trebling in size in eight years. Today, sales revenues are in the region of 300 million and the workforce numbers approximately 2,000.

The Challenge

With rapid expansion in the scope and scale of operations in the early years of the century, Kingspan Environmental & Renewables looked for support to ensure that IT systems kept pace with the evolving needs of the business.

Management wanted to adopt a more proactive approach, with sales teams being empowered to call customers to promote new products and drive customer service calls. To achieve this would require storing all customer details in a central location, readily accessible to relevant staff and managers.

The Solution

Kingspan Environmental & Renewables identified the need for an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to cater for complex business requirements across multiple locations and multiple currencies as its business extended into Europe

Tetra CS/3 (now Sage Line 500) was implemented in January 2000. This was rapidly rolled out in the months which followed until there were some eighty users. To support this major transition, Kingspan Environmental & Renewables chose Pinnacle Computing as its Sage Business Partner. Managers were impressed by Pinnacle’s extensive experience, reputation for high quality implementations and understanding of what the business needed. Pinnacle was also able to provide local consultancy, support and account management from its Belfast and other UK wide offices.

Richard Gray , IT Manager Kingspan

The Benefits

Customised by Pinnacle to suit the company’s complex requirements, particularly in area of manufacturing, Sage Line 500 has successfully catered for the company’s finance, distribution and manufacturing requirements and fulfilled all expectations.

Richard Gray, IT Manager at Kingspan Environmental & Renewables, explains, “The system supports everything we do, from sales order entry, to MRP for production planning, to inventory and purchasing. It’s extended management reporting and flexible design help our managers to maximise business information across the different areas of the company.”

The Future

Throughout all these business and technological developments, Pinnacle has supported Kingspan Environmental & Renewables in building the IT platform needed to sustain continued, profitable expansion. Commenting on the continuing relationship, Richard Gray says, “It has worked consistently well over a long period. We have professional, dedicated support from Pinnacle. They have the experience to manage implementations effectively and ensure that our systems evolve as our business needs change. Like us, they have grown over time and have the size and scale to provide the coverage we need.” With Pinnacle’s help, Kingspan Environmental & Renewables is planning to exploit SalesLogix further as its chosen CRM platform. A mobile version of SalesLogix has been recently purchased and a pilot is in progress.

Solutions Overview

Enterprise resource planning which covers every aspect of the business.